To M. V. Kiseleva, June 1886. Babkino.

1 This short note was sent by Chekhov to Maria Kiseleva, a family friend and fellow writer at whose Babkino estate the Chekhovs summered, in June 1886. It appears to have accompanied a story manuscript submitted for publication in a children’s magazine Kiseleva was involved with. Rather than a straightforward cover letter, Chekhov casts it as a mock-official communication written in the third person, as if by a fictitious "author," A. Indeykin, petitioning for prompt payment.

2 The letter is a small comic set-piece typical of Chekhov’s private correspondence with close friends: it plays with bureaucratic and literary conventions (invoking "materialists,critics," and the "interests of the beautiful") to needle Kiseleva good-naturedly about payment, ending with an absurdly precise mock address pinpointing a spot near the kitchen where a cat and dog once broke a pot. It illustrates the playful, joking register Chekhov adopted with intimates, distinct from his more formal literary and business correspondence.